If you love Pride and Prejudice and you live in Nova Scotia, please consider joining JASNA Nova Scotia for our celebration of the 200th anniversary of the novel’s publication. We’re meeting on Sunday, January 27th, at 2pm, and if you email me or leave a comment below, I can send you directions.

I’ll talk about “Jane Austen’s ‘Darling Child’: 200 Years of Pride and Prejudice,” and we’ll discuss the novel and its current reputation. There might even be syllabub.

Pride and Prejudice was published on January 28, 1813, and while she kept her authorship a secret from almost everyone, Jane Austen was keenly interested in how the book was received. She wrote to Cassandra on February 4th that “you must be prepared for the Neighbourhood being perhaps already informed of there being such a Work in the World, & in the Chawton World!” She could have no way of knowing just how popular the Work would be in the World for the next couple of centuries.

It will be a great pleasure to discuss Pride and Prejudice at a meeting to celebrate its bicentenary. Jane Austen’s siblings were keen and appreciative readers of her works. and although a specific record for their responses to P&P does not exist, we can infer something about her brother Charles’s view. Regarding Mansfield Park, he did “not like it so well as P&P,” thus he at least enjoyed it more than MP. More specific praise comes in the course of his assessment of Emma, when he wrote comparing the new novel to “my favorite Pride and Prejudice.”

That’s great that you can make it on Sunday, Sheila. Thanks for piecing together Charles’s opinion of P&P. Too bad we don’t have more detailed commentary from him about why he gave Pride and Prejudice the preference, but it’s interesting to know that it was his favourite even though MP was the one with naval connections. Or maybe it was the absence of naval connections that he liked?

Welcome!

I write about Jane Austen, Jane Austen for kids, and Edith Wharton. Sometimes I post about other writers I admire, such as L.M. Montgomery, and about places I love (especially Nova Scotia and Alberta). I taught writing at Harvard University before I decided to come home to Nova Scotia to write full time.

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Youth and Experience

A new blog series celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

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"I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way; And though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other." Jane Austen to James Stanier Clarke, 1 April 1816

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